Direct Links to the Magna Carta

Yesterday I listened to our President make a statement to the British Parliament, covering events from Runnymede in 1215 to date.

1215 was the date the Magna Carta (great charter) was signed, which became the forerunner of our Declaration Of Independence.   

My involvement in this presentation came because the work of my late wife and her cousin in genealogy proved they were eligible to become Magna Carta Dames, in which they proved a linkage to five of the barons who were the original signers of the great document. Now I have a bookcase full of much of the research they did, so I am looking for someone who might have a use for their work.

It was fun and made travel interesting in our younger days to visit the sites where her ancestors came to this country in Massachusetts, then following the footsteps as they moved with the growth of our country through Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and even to Missouri. One was a surveyor who died in opening Missouri with the only description of his burial being that he was buried on high ground overlooking the great river, Mississippi, which we figured to be in the area of Altenburg, where his findings were found in recordings at the County Seat in Book 1, Page 1, as I remember.

Then later, we found one of her relatives living in a chalk rock house, south of Quinter, KS, with the land still being farmed by family members and the original home still intact.

Another built a sod house in Colorado, and was living there. We went to his funeral from that house, and shot jack rabbits to bring back to Eureka as presents for the shop owners the next morning.

So, President Obama said much for the freedom that the Magna Carta in the United Kingdom and the Declaration of Independence in the United States of America had to do with the freedom now being desired around the world.

His greatest applause interruption came when he said a sentence that called attention to the fact that before them stood a grandson of a cook in the British Service, and now President of the United States, showing what freedom brings.

My family loves the plaque of membership in the Magna Carta Dames gained by my wife. It qualifies the females in the family the opportunity for membership, if they desire.